EDITORIAL

With the start of the fall school semester, Hays CISD staff members are trying to make sure students have the correct schedules, keep the flow going, get everyone to school on time.

It’s a massive job.

The student count for the first day of school at Hays CISD was 14,755. That’s an increase of more than 200 students over last year, with statistics showing the first day of class is never the largest. With the district growing at least 37 percent in the last five years, it  is a logistical nightmare just keeping up with the information.

It is incredible, though, that parents of Hays High students had to stand in line for hours, trying to get their children’s schedules and fill out paperwork, while Lehman students breezed through the process, even picking up textbooks in less than one hour.

Sure, Hays High was trying to accomplish the actual completion of that interminable paperwork by requiring parents to come with their student and fill out forms before the student could get his/her schedule.

It was good in theory. It failed in actuality.

The district requires repetitive information that should easily be made available to any teacher through its student information system. Why should parents have to fill out insurance information and parent/guardian address and phone numbers three, four, five times?

Parents should be able to go online, possibly through some program like the Discovery Portal,  fill out “paperwork”, make sure information is correct, and quickly approve it. Most governmental entities these days require most of the paperwork be done online – to save time and money. Schools, though, still require repetitive forms, making parents take off work to pick up schedules and more. It is, quite simply, a waste of time, of manhours, of resources.

Another byproduct of using online information systems is that teachers, coaches and district officials could all get the information they need.

Years ago, Hays CISD was on a quest to make sure students were at the forefront of the technology boom. Maybe we should put this problem to our brightest students and see if they can figure out a solution.

It can’t be any worse than hundreds of parents standing in line for more than a thousand cumulative hours, waiting to get schedules, permits and photo IDs.